


One Love

by h0ldthiscat



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, don't you worry your pretty little mind, just mentions of scully and the other dude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-17 00:10:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5846296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/h0ldthiscat/pseuds/h0ldthiscat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She looks over at him, hair ruffled from the wind, hands stuffed into his pants pockets, and thinks--not for the first time--that she might be in love with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Love

“Dana? Dana Scully?”

She turns her head at the unfamiliar voice and is met with a distantly familiar face. A tall, slender man with sandy colored hair and blue eyes looks at her like he’s just found a new species in the rainforest. 

“Oh my god, it is you!” he says with a twittering laugh. “Your hair’s different.”

“Yours… isn’t?” She tries lamely, feeling terrible that she really has no idea who this guy is. 

He’s begun to catch on and extends a hand for their reintroduction. “Bob Madary. We were at Maryland together, we overlapped a year.”

“Oh, of course! Bob!” As she shakes his hand she’s hit with visions of undergrad dorm rooms: Bob Marley posters and foosball tables and dirty socks everywhere, somehow. 

“You’re looking great, Dana. You look really good.” Bob releases his hold on her but then something else comes back… a drunken night during finals, a lot of Def Leppard. 

“Bob Madary,” she repeats, more slowly now, as she remembers one of the more awkward sexual experiences of her young life. 

“How long have you been with the Bureau, I thought you went on to med school?”

“I did, and I joined the Bureau shortly thereafter…” She trails off as she feels a familiar six-foot presence just behind her and Bob dons a curious expression. “Bob, this is my partner, Agent--”

Mulder extends his hand past her shoulder to shake Bob’s. “Agent Mulder.”

Bob raises his eyebrows and introduces himself to Mulder. To Scully, he says, “You didn’t even turn around.”

“She’s just that good,” Mulder says, stepping to her side. 

“Mulder, Bob and I went to undergrad together, and now he--” She stops, realizing she hasn’t asked him what he does for the Bureau yet.

“I run a forensics lab at Quantico,” he supplies. “And Dana, what do you and Agent Mulder do?”

Scully opens her mouth but closes it again quickly. She’s not sure how to describe the shell of an office that’s left downstairs, all of Mulder’s work burned to ashes, work that at some point in the last six years became hers as well. She’s not sure if she can articulate her recent stint in Antarctica, from which she barely returned alive, nor their trip to Dallas where her partner had switched bodies with a stranger and followed her around for a week. And she’s not sure if she can bear the truth: that they’re on the FBI’s version of scut, paper pushing and wiretapping until someone decides they’ve done their time. 

But Mulder--thank god for Mulder--is quick to draw. “We’re between assignments at the moment.” 

It’s not a lie, so she just nods and smiles. Bob, it’s obvious, doesn’t know what that means but doesn’t think it’s polite to ask. Instead he says something that takes Scully completely by surprise. “Dana and I had plenty to do when we were between assignments at Maryland.”

She nearly chokes on the cheap champagne she’s been sipping all night. She doesn’t turn to see Mulder’s face but can only imagine the mixture of shock and delight across his features. She hopes he’s a little jealous. She doesn’t know why she hopes that. 

After a few more moments of awkward small talk, Bob excuses himself and Scully breathes a sigh of relief. 

“Somebody’s a little insecure,” Mulder chuckles. 

“What an ass,” she mutters, angrier about it than she’d realized at first. Is Bob really so shallow that he needs to flaunt his past sexual exploits to impress other men, least of all Mulder? He’s only her partner, she tells herself, there’s nothing to be jealous of. 

“You okay?” Mulder asks, stepping just a fraction closer in that way he sometimes does, that way that makes it seem like the world only contains them. 

“I just need some air,” Scully hears herself say, and he follows behind her a respectable distance as they head for the door of the hotel ballroom, through the lobby, and outside.

Immediately she wishes she’d brought her coat. November is cold this year, and even in her suit she shivers, trying to hide it from Mulder. No doubt he’d do something chivalrous, and after Antarctica she’s finding it harder not to read into these small gestures. 

“What an ass.” He echoes her earlier sentiment, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet to keep warm. 

“Only another hour,” she says aloud, but it’s mostly a reminder to herself. Only another hour of schmoozing at this conference and then she can take a cab home, put up her feet, and fall into a sleep that’s fuzzy around the edges.

“If you want to sneak out now I won’t tell anybody,” Mulder says conspiratorially. 

She looks over at him, hair ruffled from the wind, hands stuffed into his pants pockets, and thinks--not for the first time--that she might be in love with him. 

It’s not such a scary thought. He is gentle and kind and smart and incredibly stupid but thoughtful and handsome and so very tall. And then she thinks about how everything would shift, how it would all change if she spoke of the electric charge she’d felt when she’d come to in Antarctica, his face millimeters from hers, willing her back to life. How she could never unfeel the way he’d held her in the hallway outside his apartment. How nice things are now, and how telling him would cosmically change everything.

She thinks this is enough. For now. 

She considers his offer to sneak out early, pictures Kersh’s face on Monday morning if he finds out that she’d left the conference early. She considers her bed, and how her new shoes are rubbing a blister against the back of her heel. She considers Mulder beside her and links her arm through his.

“I think I’ll stay,” she answers.

He nods and they stand there against the cold. She tries not to grin.


End file.
